I'm not referring to the 1958 Newman/Woodward film but to ours -- Greenville 2012. Records fell across the country, and in Greenville we scurried, head down, shoulders bunched, in the blizzard of heat, from one air conditioned space to another, hoping to catch our breath before plotting our next move to the car, to the office, to the store. The air conditioning just never caught up with the heat.
At the Fine Arts Center the lights were almost never on in my office, and I kept the Gregorian chants on an endless loop, imagining myself in some medieval Gothic cathedral, the heat unable to penetrate the thick, cool stones that surrounded me. It worked if I didn't move, if I didn't raise my voice and if the blinds were drawn. The city was suffering and if I kept the sound down and did nothing to stir the heavy, heated, wet air, I might just make it to 5:30 p.m. It was as silent as a tomb.
Silence is not something I associate with The Fine Arts Center. Even when the students are in their studios, working, concentrating, there is the electric thrum of creative energy that is palpable, that makes this place special to student and visitor. And you can hardly call this place a tomb: there are students here from early morning until 6:30 p.m. every night of the week, except Friday.
Summers, though, are never easy: the students are gone, taking their energy and their happy sounds with them, leaving a shell of a building, a building whose silence, coupled with the enervating heat, nearly drained the life from those of us working here. There were times, too, when the "chillers" didn't work, and we considered a dash to Home Depot to pick up a couple of those big chrome stand fans to keep us alive. I was reminded of my summers on the banks of the Mississippi, where the July heat and humidity were such that we sat around the kitchen table and ran an oscillating table fan across a block of ice to keep cool.
Now here we are, finally, in September, and even with the temperatures occasionally hitting the high 80's, the students are back -- sounds and laughter restored -- and we have gone from being on life support to rising from our psychological lethargy to begin a new year, facing the challenge of challenging our talented students. We begin. Once again we will expect excellence; once again they will test the edges of their belief in themselves, know the power of discipline and hard work, know that a willingness to fail creatively is to succeed creatively. We begin. Lovely word -- begin.
Roy Fluhrer, Fine Arts Center Director
